SALAZAR GARCIA Domingo Carlos

Ikerbasque Research Fellow, University of the Basque Country, Department of Geography, Prehistory and Archaeology

Period of residence:

10 September 2018 - 8 February 2019 ; Residence in partnership with LabexMed

Research project:

Isotopes, dental calculus and diet. From hunter gathering to farming in Mediterranean Iberia

Summary of the research project:

This project aims to integrate different techniques and fields in the study of diet from past populations. Specifically, it targets the dietary patterns at the transition to agriculture (from Late Upper Palaeolithic to the Late Neolithic) in Mediterranean Iberia. Besides the archaeological and anthropological background studies required to develop this project, the main methods selected to obtain complementary dietary information are stable isotope analysis on bone collagen and the study of plant micro-remains from dental calculus.

After studying the degrees of medicine, history and archaeology at the University of Valencia (Spain), I enrolled for the development of my PhD at the Dpt. Prehistory and Archaeology of the University of Valencia and the Dpt. Human Evolution of the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany). After finishing my PhD in 2012, I started working as postdoc in the Research Group on Plant Foods in Hominin Dietary Ecology, moving on afterwards to Lecturer in the Dpt. Archaeology of the University of Cape Town for three years. Now am an Ikerbasque Reserach Fellow at the Dpt. Geography, Prehistory and Archaeology of the University of the Basque Country, as well as an Honorary Research Affiliate at the Dpt. Geological Sciences of the University of Cape Town, both places were I currently develop my research. My research focuses on the reconstruction of diet, migration, breastfeeding and weaning using biogeochemical and microscopic techniques in order to address archaeological questions from prehistoric and early historic time periods. Most of these studies focus on the evolution of peoples in Europe, especially in the Mediterranean region, but also in South America and Southern Africa, paying special attention to the "transition" between last hunter-gatherer and first farming societies. I work on the application of isotopic analysis of C, N, S, O and Sr on a range of tissues of human and faunal material, as well as on the study of micro-remains trapped in dental calculus. Am also developing isotopic, ancient DNA and proteomic methods on dental calculus as a means for recovering both dietary and health information from past populations.